OBAMA JOB WATCH: Department of Justice (Updated May 18)

The "Yes We Can" attitude at President Obama's Justice Department must have resonated with Laurie Robinson.

The Clinton-era assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs was on Obama's transition team for the office, and agreed to serve as acting leader while the administration searched for a permanent choice. But she made it clear to JJ Todaythe she had no intention of staying.

"I did it for SEVEN years!" Robinson told Youth Today in an e-mail back in January, when we asked her if she had some desire to give the federal life another go-round. "Seriously, no. I've been there and done that. I'll be helping find someone to do it. Thought I could help out until someone comes in."

The ensuing months have obviously changed her mind, because this month Obama announced his intention to nominate her for the job.

"It's an important time, with OJP charged with giving out nearly $3 billion in Recovery Act funds," said Robinson when asked what made her reconsider. That, and Attorney General Eric Holder "can be a very persuasive person."

Since her first stint at OJP (1993-2000), Robinson has been at the University of Pennsylvania, most recently as director of the school's Master of Science Program in Criminology. Before joining the Clinton administration, Robinson led the American Bar Association's criminal justice programs for 14 years.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

The scuttlebutt points to two widely-known candidates and one wild card: Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Washington, D.C., Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS); David Onek, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice and a member of the San Francisco Police Commission; and Illinois State Rep. Annazette Collins (D). The latter two names carry significant credentials, but the sense we get is that many in the field believe Schiraldi to be the strongest candidate.

"I think Vinny Schiraldi and David Onek are both committed juvenile justice reformers who will lead OJJDP in a new and better direction," says Dan Macallair, who co-founded the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) with Schiraldi in 1985 (Onek briefly consulted with CJCJ)."However, I think that Vinny's experience clearly renders him the stronger candidate."

When Youth Today asked juvenile justice professionals in September what the résumé of an OJJDP administrator should look like, the responses indicated a desire for someone who has run a system. That is why many juvenile justice professionals have quietly offered themselves up as references for Schiraldi. He has the reformer and agitator background from his days at CJCJ and the Justice Policy Institute, and the practitioner experience from his current Washington job.

"He is one of a handful of people who can translate research and literature so it's relevant for policymakers and the public," says one former colleague.

Schiraldi left the Justice Policy Institute in 2005 to run DYRS, where he put together a team of people who, like him, had been on the advocacy side of juvenile justice. The staff at DYRS includes David Brown, former executive director of the National Youth Employment Coalition, and Marc Schindler, who was a staff attorney for the Washington office of the Youth Law Center (now the Center for Children's Law and Policy).

"I'm a big fan of Vinny Schiraldi. I think he's terrific," said Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown Law School and board chair of the National Center for Youth Law.

It has been fascinating to follow Schiraldi's time at DYRS. He is regularly heralded in juvenile justice circles for quickly turning Oak Hill, truly one of the most disastrous and abusive juvenile correctional facilities in the nation, into a functional place. The agency plans to unveil a new facility, which will be smaller and offer a far better environment for developing youth, early this year.

But DYRS, and Schiraldi in particular, drew a powerful enemy in Washington Post columnist Colbert King. Over the past year, King has used his op-ed space to hammer DYRS on what he sees as a failure to supervise youth not in Oak Hill custody - some of whom committed more crimes, some of whom were killed - and an inability to prevent violence at Oak Hill. The police department sometimes disagrees with DYRS statistics that the agency says point to progress on reducing recidivism.

David Onek's name rings bells in the Democratic Party. His father, Joseph Onek, is senior counsel to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and served at the departments of Justice and State during the Clinton administration.

But Onek is a far cry from a "Heckuva-Job Brownie" type of appointment. His résumé includes stops at research and advocacy organizations (the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and the Burns Institute) and at Legal Services for Children, a Bay Area nonprofit providing legal services to youth.

"I have stood shoulder to shoulder with him defending kids," said Lateefah Simon, former executive director for San Francisco's Center for Young Women's Development, who met Onek when he worked for Legal Services for Children. "He gets it, and he's good with them, and he's spent a lot of his life figuring out how to translate that to policy."

"He's very bright and committed to young people," says Barry Krisberg, president of the national council, for whom Onek worked on development and early implementation of an OJJDP-funded comprehensive strategy for pilot sites. "He's very knowledgeable about OJJDP."

Onek also served as deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, working under Director Allen Nance. The rap from some in the San Francisco's juvenile justice network is that, with his heart in the right place, Onek attempted to restructure the juvenile justice contracts that the city had with nonprofits around the best practices promoted by OJJDP.

But he "didn't pay enough attention to the service delivery and existing structure" in place, says one person close to the city's system. Some organizations lost grants that they were accustomed to getting.

The other view is that Onek and Nance, along with Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Bill Sifferman, were attempting to refocus the city's juvenile justice money on kids who were actually in the system, as opposed to funding prevention work. That rattled the boat for lots of community organizations that were accustomed to receiving money from the mayor's office for violence prevention.

Those organizations chased the money for programs that had little to do with prevention work, lost, and raised Hell until the mayor had to tell Nance and Onek to restore some of the old contracts for a year.

The restructuring "came down in a clumsy way," said Bruce Fisher, executive director of Huckleberry House, one of the city's largest providers of juvenile justice services. He believes Nance and Sifferman were the ones intent on shaking things up without involving CBOs in the planning.

Gena Rodriguez, executive director of San Francisco's Youth Justice Institute, disagrees. "I would say the process was inclusive. It really looked at what evolving needs were, with lots of broad input from the field and community."

Either way, Fisher says, Onek took more heat than he deserved because he was the one who had to execute the plan that Nance and Sifferman crafted. "Blaming David is like blaming the messenger," Fisher said.

The guess here is that a move to OJJDP is hardly a no-brainer for Onek. He grew up in Washington, but he and his wife, Kara (daughter of former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis), have settled on the West Coast with their two children.

Then again, the couple is also excited about the new administration: They were early supporters of, and threw three fundraisers for, Obama, the first of which was in June of 2007.

"David is really very well-qualified for a number of jobs that relate to justice," Edelman says.

Another wild-card candidate we've heard about is Illinois State Rep. Annazette Collins (D), who has her fingerprints all over juvenile justice reform in the state. Collins has represented the west side of Chicago since 2001, and served on the Transfer Task Force that ultimately removed a law that had ushered scores of youths from the Windy City into adult court for relatively light drug charges. She co-sponsored the bill that raised the state's age of juvenile court jurisdiction to 18, and the bill that created a state juvenile justice agency that is separate from its adult corrections system.

"It would be difficult to find an adjective to describe her persistence in making sure juveniles are treated differently than adults in Illinois," said Mary Reynolds, policy analyst for the Springfield-based Juvenile Justice Initiative. "She would be a dynamo" at OJJDP.

Collins has practitioner experience as well. She was a public administrator in the IllinoisDepartment of Children and Families and in the Cook County Probation Department, and served as a prison correctional officer.

***March 25

Another contender for the top spot at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has emerged of late: Child Welfare League of America's Director of Juvenile Justice-Child Welfare, John Tuell.

Tuell was in juvenile probation for the State of Virginia, then worked for former OJJDP Administrator Shay Bilchik, and in 2003 rejoined Bilchik at CWLA. At OJJDP, he was in charge of state relations, assisting states and monitoring their progress on the four core requirements of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA).

That division also handled the Juvenile Accountability Block Grants and OJJDP's comprehensive strategy on serious, violent and chronic juvenile offenders, which was launched in 1995.

"He has a nice background," says one former colleague at OJJDP. "A lot of things that would serve that office well."

Another disagrees. "He does not have my vote," the former staffer said.

Experience with state relations and core requirements are certainly relevant, as reauthorization of the JJDPA heats up and advocates push for better enforcement of the requirements. OJJDP also has an entire child protection division, so Tuell's knowledge on the interplay between child welfare and JJ systems could be a boon there.

***April 7

Two more names thrown that have been thrown around for the top job at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention are Baltimore attorney Stuart Simms and Ernestine Gray, former chief judge of the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in Louisiana.

Simms ran the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services from 1995 to 1997 before being promoted to run the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, where he stayed until 2003. Prior to his work with juvenile and adult corrections, he served as deputy state's attorney.

One person who knows Simms believes he would be a very safe bet to be confirmed, and would likely be an efficient administrator who would not rock the boat much. "I can't imagine anybody criticizing him" during a confirmation process, the person said.

Gray is one of the rare birds who remains on the juvenile court bench with no desire to flee for greener pastures. She is still an active judge, now in her 25th year on the bench. Gray is also a former president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and serves as president of the board of trustees for the National Court Appointed Special Advocates.

"She would do a fabulous job at anything she did," said David Bell, the chief judge for the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court. "She's just a phenomenal individual. She's probably forgotten more than any of us will ever learn."

The same person who sees Simms as a competent candidate said Gray lacks that administrative gene required to manage a large federal staff and budget. "She doesn't have an administrative bone in her body," he said. "I can't imagine her running" OJJDP.

Civil Rights

Obama nominated Tom Perez to be the assistant attorney general for civil rights in March. The office is of major importance to the juvenile justice field because of its role in litigation against facilities or systems that do not provide appropriate conditions for young offenders. Since 1998, more than 15 civil rights division cases involving juvenile facilities have gone to a settlement or court decision.

Like his potential new boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, Perez is a veteran of the Clinton administration. He served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights under Janet Reno, then moved over to the Department of Health and Human Services to head its office of civil rights during Clinton's final two years in office. Most recently, Perez was the secretary of labor, licensing and regulation for the state of Maryland.

Filed Under:

Onek would be the worst candidate. I am not surprised that Ms. Castro supports him since she benefited from the backroom deal Onek made to pass funds to her top heavy, service light organization. Schiraldi is the most qualified and he does not have to ride his father and in-laws coattails. Schiraldi has made real accomplishments. The money train in San Francisco has ended and organizatiosn such a Youth Justice Institute (an oxymoron) are now going to have to prove their worth or fold and let organizations that can prove their effectiveness and cost effectiveness take over to really improve the lives of youth.

Nicolas King

As a former colleague of David Onek’s, I can’t imagine OJJDP could find a more qualified candidate, or one with more unassailable integrity. Making tough decisions about money and reform is bound to rankle some.

David would fit in well with the Obama Administration because professionalism, character, pragmatism and results steer his judgment. He has relevant experience at great organizations: Legal Services for Children, Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, NCCD, Burns Institute, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and the SF Police Commission.